


take a step back and breathe

by angelheartbeat



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Ambiguity, Angst, Bruce Banner Angst, Bruce Banner Feels, Bruce Banner-centric, Character Death, Emotional Hurt, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Loneliness, M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Survival, Survival Horror, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-25 21:45:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14986268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelheartbeat/pseuds/angelheartbeat
Summary: Bruce Banner is the last person on earth.He'd always craved alone time. He never thought it would be so exhausting.





	take a step back and breathe

**Author's Note:**

> why did gray do this, you ask? well, *jean ralphio voice* hes the woOoOoOooOoooOOrst!!

bruce sits quietly, numb and cold, in a pocket of the universe tailor-made for him.

his knees draw up to his chest, his hand trails uselessly beside him. when he glances around, his glassy eyes spot no familiar face, no one to offer him even a smile.

the air around him smells like smoke and dust.

he is completely, utterly alone.

its less peaceful than he thought it might be, his ears ringing with the overwhelming silence. his heartbeat thuds, pulsing through the ring and reminding him that hes alive, hes alone, pumping radioactivity through his veins to tell him that hes going to be alone for a very long time.

the pressure of loneliness weighs down on him like a ton of bricks - no, like a hulk. like an emerald goliath breathing down his neck and mercilessly compressing his spine, roaring in his ears until the more powerful of the two is truly established.

eventually, he has to stand up. he knows that. he collapsed in this spot he doesn't know how long ago. it could be minutes. it could be days. the numbness in his body outweighs his sense of time. especially as, now hes alone, time might as well be obsolete.

it had never really crossed his mind that he'd outlive humanity. but then, he wasn't really human, was he? the green headache behind his eyes proved that much.

humans had always killed one another, he muses, staring unseeingly into the horizon. it was only a matter of time before they all killed one another or their planet, and dropped like flies around him. 

it was an odd feeling, being able to pinpoint the exact moment that the decline of humanity truly began. when dust flew about with no rhyme or reason, and his pulse thumped in his ears. ever since then, the earth was vicious. people turned on one another, hunting for a solution to the grief and loneliness.

now it was down to bruce, to bear that burden.

sometimes, when he walks the lonely roads of what used to be familiar, he spies corpses, skeletons mostly, festering beside the road. fallen victims of human nature. he salvages the contents of their pockets and buries the bodies, holds memorials by himself for memories he never knew, people who had families and lives and deserved better than unmarked graves on the sides of roads, the names of which were long since forgotten.

perhaps the worst part of it is that he knows there is life on other planets, thriving and bustling and unknowing that on earth, on an inconsequential land mass in an infinitesimal solar system, one man drags his feet along what remains of civilization. 

he wonders what happened to the friends he thought he had, the ones mighty enough to live this long naturally. particularly the god of thunder. thor. bruce doesn't know if he misses anyone more, and perhaps its because of the fact that thor could visit him, save him from the crushing weight of numbness. but he does not, and bruce remains alone.

he often considers the inevitability of death, as he kneels beside lumps of dirt, under which reside bones and flesh that used to live and breathe and laugh. particularly how ironic it is that he, a man who craved the end so deeply, was the sole survivor of the end of all things. 

why hasn't thor considered his plight?

he feels selfish for even thinking it. but he's so bone-achingly isolated, so painfully alone, he thinks he might be entitled to a little selfishness. just enough to wonder why one of his closest friends, someone he wishes he could consider a lover, hasn't contacted him in all the years he's been wandering the world without a friend in sight.

maybe something awful happened. something worse, somehow, than the destruction of his home. bruce knows how that feels, and he wishes he had arms to hold him that he could hold back and simply melt into, sob away all of his isolation and terror and all the dirt and pain of his unwilling stint in solitary confinement.

but no god arrives, no warm hand to pull him close, and it is just him and the monster in his soul.

and the monster eats him up inside.

god if he doesn't claw at bruce's will, at the last remnants of his control. if he doesn't chew on emotions and sever empathy and rip a hole in the space-time continuum of bruce's body and turn his mind inside out. if he doesn't rip and snarl and smash and tear just as much as he's always done - then what does he do?

often, lying on grassy hills that died long ago, bruce stares at the grey-tinged sky and wonders. wonders why it was him. wonders why the world has such a cruel sense of humour. wonders why his world is so mind-bendingly worthless that not a single savior has arrived to free him from his eternity. wonders why he doesn't just let go, leap from the brink and allow hulk to roam the world alone.

he has an answer for that last one.

hulk doesn't deserve this any more than he does.

perhaps less, in fact. despite the pain and suffering he caused, bruce feels sorry for the other guy. the world is empty and cold and he is exhausted and numb and bored, and hulk wouldn't even have the choice to give control up to bruce, because he has no doubts that as soon as he sunk into jade oblivion he would cease to exist, his mind already existing for far longer than humans should. hulk fights for control, rages for freedom, and bruce feels sorry for him.

he can sense the little boy in him. the little boy who once was bruce himself, cowering in his room, away from the menace of his father. away from flying fists and cutting remarks. bruce knows, has accepted, that hulk originates from terror, evolved into anger over time. 

he would hate for that lonely, furious little boy to be alone again.

and so the lonely, furious man is alone himself, if only to protect his destructive counterpart.

its a ridiculous situation. he knows that. he knows that if he wasn't alone, his friends would rain down hellfire on his self-loathing. the people he considered his friends, and he hoped the sentiment was returned.

but they're not here. no one is here, except him. him and the monster, no, the child fighting against his mind.

and so he sits quietly, numb and cold, in a pocket of the universe tailor-made for him.

**Author's Note:**

> this was. a mess
> 
> anyway, yeet those comments my way


End file.
